Dear Pastor Who Keeps Emailing Me…

I think there is the widespread assumption that I left the Church because I, personally, was so hurt by it. I want to be clear, I didn’t leave because of my personal hurt or pain, I left because too many others were being hurt and had been pained by the sect of Christianity/Church I was involved in and benefitting off of. Ethically/morally speaking my conscious would not allow me to continue to benefit from this form of “Church” while so many of my friends and those I consider to be family were continuously being dehumanized by it.

Have I been hurt by the Church, yes and absolutely, although the caveat to this is that oddly, most of my hurt, pain, and anger came from the feeling of being lied to. I was sold a version of Jesus, Church, and the Gospel that was watered down so much so that I came to realize I was never sold Jesus, I was never a part of The Church, and this version of the Gospel was not “Gospel,” it was bullshit.

• With an estimated 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the US, living without proper health care, being sold into slavery, working beneath minimum wage, while attempting to maintain not only their life, but their children’s lives.
• With 40% of homeless youth being LGBT, having experienced the trauma of rejection, neglect, and abandonment from their family and Church.
• Single mothers displaced suffering from forced modern day ghettoization [due to Christian leadership] living a town over from your Church…

I would read the bible, see the lives of the apostles, study the teachings of Jesus, and believe that “this power of the Holy Spirit” supposedly living inside all of us would lead us to acknowledge the poor, powerless, and marginalized. Nope, because that’s liberal.

So when you email me stating your concern for me, accusing me of being “reactionary” or angry – I must say that 1) Yes I am angry and 2) Yes I am reacting to the injustice, maltreatment, and theological malpractice I’ve seen within wealthy Churches (for this matter both conservative and mainline).

I think George Carlan says it best:

I will acknowledge that quite possibly, your experience with the conservative church was different, and most likely, if this is the case, you’re of “European decent,” or like me, or rather my former self, benefitting off it in some way [although – as seen in Ricky Gervais quote below, I feel like a majority of “white-guys” are done with this faith too #Enlightenment].

It’s fine if this is for you, but it doesn’t afford you the right to impose it upon me, or others. If your concern is still that I’m not building your faith up, or edifying your version of “church,” all the while I’m acknowledging how this faith has ruined other peoples livelihood then please realize, your concern is only about you.

Apparently, I’m not the only person who feels this way:

“I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a God. I don’t think there is a God, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a God. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different God, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are.” — Ricky Gervais [For those new to the blog, I like Ricky Gervais a ton, would rather listen to a sermon of his than most Christian pastors, but I’m not atheist]

It must be understood that just because something does not encourage you, does not mean that it doesn’t encourage others. One of the objectives of this blog is to stand in solidarity with “the other” – Hurt, wounded, angry, fed up, reactionary, proactive, white, black, female, male, straight, gay, latino, Asian…

I don’t find anything more heart-wrenchingly frustrating than when a eurocentric-privileged-straight-Christian-male within pastoral leadership [I know über specific, you’d think there’s only 10 of them out there, but I kid you not I get an email once a week, at least, from this exact demographic] accusing me of oppressing them and creating division.

This is just as pathetic as blaming a feminist for oppressing men, which unfortunately they do this also. I’ve learned that if I have to explain to someone why feminists are not the oppressors, or break down the history of Christianity and its continued role in divisiveness then we are so far disconnected from each other that there’s really, and truly, not much point to us having a conversation… yet, maybe someday – but I’m not holding my breath [super long run-on, I know, take a breather and read on].

It would be like trying to convince someone that 2 + 2 = 4, and trying to convince someone that 2 + 2 = 4 is like trying to convince Donald Sterling that racism is still pervasive, and he’s part of the reason why it’s still so pervasive.

Not a conversation I’m willing to have.

I’ll conclude it here with this: If anyone expects me to “lift-up” and exhort a systematically oppressive doctrine, that’s not going to happen. #NeoCalvinism

We live in a world and time in which the privileged are so far detached from a reality, that everyone else experiences, most [privileged Christians] will read this and have no idea why I’m saying what I’m saying. This is why the church is being deemed irrelevant – the privileged pastor lacks the ability to understand, empathize, and therefore connect with “the other”.

Okay time for dinner – if you disagree with this feel free to shoot me an email here: [email protected]